Being a cynic gives one low expectations when looking at
the machinations of our politicians. Unfortunately it doesn’t
make it any less infuriating when they behave in a cowardly,
self-serving way. It just takes away the element of surprise.

You certainly didn’t have to be clairvoyant to see it coming.
In a classic display of pants-pooping fear our Democratic
politicians have all but agreed to load the bombs onto the
Baghdad bound planes. You got the feeling that some of them
might incur a serious injury elbowing one another out of the
way to vote for Bush’s blank check resolution. Back in August
they were asking for a debate. By September all they could
say was “Bombs away, Captain.”

Terrified of being called unpatriotic our guys tried briefly
to put the vote off until after the election and then when
Bush and Cheney huffed and puffed a little on TV our honorables
immediately folded their tents and promised a quick yes vote
to anything the administration was willing to send up. Obviously
impressed with the sudden display of “bipartisanship” Republicans
from Bush to uber-harpy Ann Coulter proceeded to call the
Democrats unpatriotic anyway. I guess they weren’t caving
quite fast enough.

I recognize that you have to compromise in politics. The
rigid, iron-willed ideologue almost always loses and the causes
he espouses suffer as a result. But there are rare times when
you have to fight for a principle and it seems to me that
when your country is about to become a outlaw nation and wage
an unjustified, unprovoked war on another country it’s time
to stand for what you’re supposed to believe in. Compromise
on snail darters and marginal tax rates but this is a life
and death issue. Since Vietnam the Democratic Party has professed
to be against wars that weren’t defensive in nature. In 1991
the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted against the Gulf
War. In 1992 they held the Congress and captured the Presidency.
The political consequences of standing on principle were minimal
then. The party that produced Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy
and George McGovern in the war ravaged year of 1968 simply
cut and ran this time. Why?

Would it have been too much to ask for the Democrats, if
they couldn’t find it in themselves to oppose the war, to
try to tie the force resolution to a UN authorization. After
all, if you absolutely have to live and die with polls the
polls are saying that the people overwhelmingly opposed going
to war without allies. And couldn’t somebody at least raise
the issue of the cost of the war. Couldn’t the ominous report
that the administration is proposing Draconian cutbacks in
Medicare payments have spurred the Democrats to at least suggest
that the war be paid for by canceling the more obscene portions
of the tax cut that they so spinelessly rolled over for last
year. The party has (or at least had) a forty year commitment
to the health and welfare of the elderly and now the creeps
in this administration are going to pay for their reprehensible
war by putting the squeeze on them. And obviously our side
is just going to let them do it.

Of course there are some Democrats who are opposing Bush’s
war. Al Gore and Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd among others
have been willing to suffer the slings and arrows but without
the leadership of the party behind them they were just weak
voices of sanity amid gathering hysteria. And we must remember
that Gore has no seat to lose and Kennedy and Byrd are in
no danger of ever losing theirs. Of course, in the end, 126
Democratic Representatives and 21 Senators had the courage
to vote against the resolution. But to have squeezed at least
some concessions from Bush would have required a concerted
effort on the part of the party leadership – and it simply
wasn’t there.

It’s tempting to look at this as a month-long commercial
for the Green Party. But that would be a useless exercise
in self-immolation. It would impress no one and have no effect
on the current political dynamic. And it would just make things
worse.

The Green party is a political nonentity. Have any of your
friends who aren’t political junkies ever even heard of the
Green party? It’s easy to be an absolutist when you have no
chance of winning and no intention of trying to win. The Greens
can pursue ideological purity precisely because they don’t
and can’t win. And don’t delude yourself that, if by some
chance they ever started to win some offices, that they wouldn’t
shrink into the same self-preservation mode that we saw from
the Democrats on Iraq.

As a third party voter you can’t be a real player in the
political process but you can be a spoiler. Had the Greens
not been on the ballot in Florida (or New Hampshire for that
matter) Gore would be in the White House and the little functional
illiterate would be back in Texas on his treadmill rubber-stamping
an occasional death warrant that appeared in front of him.

So as maddening as it was to see our supposed leaders have
to run home for new underwear when Bush and Cheney demanded
their war-making blank check we have no choice to but vote
and work for Democratic candidates in the election on November
5. We can be a voice from within the party but outside of
it we have no voice at all and the people we love to hate
will get an all-encompassing blank check.

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